But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.
1 Peter 2:9 NKJV
I grew up in southern Indiana, the youngest of seven children in an Amish family. Many bishops, ministers, and deacons came from our clan. When our family “took the stage” and sang for people, we presented an impressive outward appearance, and people thought we were a wonderful, spiritual family. I learned all about the “Sunday face.” But that Sunday face concealed so much darkness. My father came from a long line of all kinds of abuse, which then corrupted our family. It victimized us and turned us into victimizers.
I thought the abuse was normal. My family convinced me I was mentally disabled, unfit for marriage. “You’re not like other children. You’re overweight. You don’t look nice,” they said. The abuse wouldn’t happen if I wasn’t “such a bad girl” and if I wore longer dresses. I assumed I’d never make it to Heaven because even God stood ready to punish me. Even so, part of me sensed the abuse and dysfunction were not normal, and I prayed, even as a small girl, that God would help me move far away.
Though I always had a desire to seek God, in my early twenties, I briefly lived the wild life. One night, I went out riding with a group of co-workers. We were drinking, and the driver careened out of control. Evil seemed to grip the car. I prayed a desperate prayer, “Lord, I don’t want to be here. I am running, but I don’t know what I’m running from. If I die tonight, I know I won’t be with you. Please get me out of this.” God answered my prayer, and several weeks later, my boss called me and said, “I don’t know why, but I feel like I am supposed to fire you.” My interaction with those bad influences thankfully came to an end.
Escape to Lancaster
At the age of twenty-seven, I moved to Lancaster County, PA to help my sister who had married a widower with six children. My parents had only allowed me to leave for six months, but it was an opportunity for me to get away. Unfortunately, my brother, the worst abuser, also followed me to Pennsylvania. And at my family’s insistence, he moved into the house where I lived—so the abuse continued.
One of my sisters, in the Spring of 2017, confided that she had been raped multiple times by our older brother and father. To find healing, she entered an Amish-run recovery program for abused women. Simultaneously, my family moved me out of my house and into the home of an Amish couple, where I cared for my sister’s six children. After living with me, the couple took me aside and tried to warn me, “Marilyn, you are being badly abused.” I tried to laugh it off.
“No, I’m not.” My mind had blocked out many of the memories; they were too painful to keep around. But that couple had seen what I couldn’t, and they persisted.
“When you do remember, we will be here for you.”
My abusive brother started attending counseling because our father had abused him as well. He came home from an appointment one day, and I mentioned to him, “I’ve always felt as if my life is a puzzle and someone has stolen some of the pieces.” They were simply missing, like the blank spots in my memory.
“I think I have some of those pieces,” my brother answered. He proceeded to confess every detail of what he’d done to me over the years—the horrifying memories I’d blocked out of my mind. This disclosure and newfound awareness shook me so deeply that I collapsed emotionally. Doctors prescribed medication, but I needed so much more than medication to heal from the trauma of the abuse. In His graciousness, the Lord was about to give me “much more.”
A Dream, and the Beginning of Healing
Soon afterward, the Lord came to me in a dream. In the dream, He asked me why I wouldn’t date anyone. “If I bring a really great guy into your life, would you be willing to accept him?” I had excuses why I couldn’t, lies I had been told and thought were the truth about myself,
“No God, I can’t.”
“Will you trust Me?”
“Yes, God.”
“You are going to go on a trip out west, and something amazing is going to happen.”
The Lord providentially arranged for me to take a trip to Colorado. A family from our same Amish congregation had a daughter getting started as a teacher out there. I traveled with the family. They were chauffeured by one of their sons, Matthew Lantz, who had left the Amish church a few years prior. Matt and I talked a lot during the trip and subsequently spent a lot more time together. He encouraged me, texted me Bible verses, and prayed for me. But when our relationship turned serious, I backpedaled and disclosed to him that I’d been abused. “Is that how you scare all of your guys away?” he calmly responded. Thankfully, he continued to pursue me.
Because of the abuse done to me, I suffered attacks during which I would turn stiff and shake all over. I couldn’t breathe or speak, and everything would go black, though I was conscious and could hear. After my relationship with Matt became public knowledge, I felt one of these episodes coming on. Hoping Matt wouldn’t notice, I ran upstairs to my bedroom. It was so severe that I collapsed on my bed and felt like I was going to die. I tried to call Matt’s name, but couldn’t speak loudly enough. Sensing something amiss, he came after me, picked me up, and carried me downstairs. Then he called one of the pastors from Petra Church, where Matt attended at the time. As soon as pastor Ken walked into the room, he rebuked the afflicting spirits, and my body relaxed. He then prayed with us for a while, bringing comfort and peace.
While we were still dating, I experienced two more emotional breakdowns, and each time Matt prayed and waged spiritual warfare over me. Always the gentleman, he never took advantage of the situation. When I couldn’t rest, he would lie on a mattress on the floor or sit on the edge of my bed and hold my hand. He was faithful to help me heal. We married in September of 2021.
Spiritual Surgery
Though I had been working with a counselor and mentor to get to the bottom of my pain, I still didn’t have a full picture of my brokenness or my inclination to commit suicide. After our marriage, the emotional and spiritual bondage that held me captive opened our little family to attack by the enemy. Matt and I lived in three different homes, one of which developed black mold that caused health problems. Repeated trips to the emergency room or to the doctor drained our finances. Additionally, my family always borrowed from me but never repaid anything. So I’d turned to materialism and hoarding for self-preservation. When we had to move twice in that first year, the three trailer loads of stuff I’d accumulated highlighted just how serious my hoarding problem had become. Matt and my counselor encouraged me to get rid of as many things as I could, but I was so emotionally attached to the stuff that I’d throw up whenever I disposed of something.
My parents came to visit after our son Milan was born in April 2025. With their arrival, I began having severe flashbacks of the ongoing abuse I’d suffered as a little girl. The details in those flashbacks cluttered my mind and robbed me of any peace. I couldn’t sleep and would throw up repeatedly. Different people prayed for us, but the breakthrough never came; I continued to live oppressed.
In March of 2026, my mentor invited Matt and me to attend a deliverance service. I didn’t want to attend for fear of embarrassment if I had a serious episode. Adding to the duress, the night before the service, I had a particularly brutal flashback. This time, I relived the abuse from my father, which was even more personal and more painful. Weak and exhausted, yet determined to get free from this, we went.
When we got to the church on Saturday night, I felt the Lord say to me, “Tonight’s your night.” A moment later, the minister began to speak to the crowd and echoed those exact words, “And tonight’s your night.” He continued, “The Lord asked me to speak on trauma tonight.” Despite my previous inability to cry, I broke down and sobbed.
As the minister spoke, it felt as if he were telling my story. He had us stand up, pray, and repent of bitterness and unforgiveness. The Lord brought people to mind, I didn’t even know I needed to forgive. Then he started walking us through a prayer over various sins. I started shaking and thought I was going to collapse. When he addressed the spirit of trauma, my stomach went into revolt, so I rushed out to the restroom, followed by some of the ministry team. I sensed the Lord say, “By His (Jesus’) stripes you are healed.” (Isaiah 53:5) The team continued to pray through a list of issues. When they mentioned the spirit of trauma again, I doubled over and vomited harder. Yet I kept hearing, “By His stripes you are healed.” Something was leaving me. I was experiencing deliverance, and it was like having spiritual surgery; the defiled part of who I used to be was being removed.
Emptying and Filling
In His mercy, God cleanses evil from our lives, but He also wants to fill them with His goodness and grace. On our way home, my mentor invited us to Petra Church’s water baptism service the next morning. I wasn’t keen on going since the deliverance ministry had left me so weak. “And I didn’t want to get baptized in front of all those people.” Even so, we attended and sat right behind our pastors, Brian and Tracy.
“Do you want to get baptized?” Tracy asked me.
I still shrank from the idea of having the entire congregation watch my baptism. My son started to fuss, so I conveniently took him out to the nursery. On the way, however, I bumped into my wonderful doula who’d attended my son’s birth. “Are you going to get baptized?” she asked.
I sighed. “I don’t know. I’m just so tired.”
“I’ll hold your baby if you decide to get baptized,” she said.
The television in the nursery had been turned off. As I sat down, someone opened the door and turned the livestream back on. At that exact moment, I watched Brian Coles say, “There’s someone here that doesn’t want to get baptized in front of all these people. If that’s you, please come down.”
Hmm. I wonder who that’s going to be, I thought to myself.
As I was walking out of the room, a couple who’d prayed for me the night before at the deliverance service happened to be standing right there. He asked if he and some others could pray for my family and me. As they prayed, God said, “Defeat the devil all the way. Go and be baptized.” I knew I was the one being invited. As I stood in the baptismal pool, God said to me, “By your obedience today, you are cutting off all the generational darkness from your family.” As I went down into the water and came back up, it was as if every chain had been left in the pool. I’d never felt so clean and free in my entire life. The void I’d sensed after the deliverance service had been filled with God’s healing power; the missing puzzle pieces to my life had finally been found and put together in order. God was rebuilding my life.
Baptism of Fire
Even still, God wasn’t finished blessing us. The very next night, I had another dream: God came into a room where Matt, Milan, and I were sitting. I had been concerned that my family’s generational sins and curses would fall on my son. In the dream, the Lord sprinkled beads of fire over my head. “You are baptized in my name,” He said. Then He did the same thing to my son. In the morning, when I relayed the dream to my mentor, she exclaimed excitedly, “You’ve been baptized in the Holy Spirit.”
And I felt it. The encounter with the Lord in my dream had made me literally feel born again. My deliverance and baptism brought healing to so many areas of our lives. The physical and emotional seizures ceased, and we regained our balance. The need to hoard and self-protect was gone. And God also provided financially in a miraculous way to compensate for the debt we were in.
If you’re dealing with issues like mine, don’t be afraid to reach out for help or ask for biblical counseling. That can be hard if, like me, you’ve had Scripture used against you. But remember that the season you are currently in is not forever, even though it might feel like it. God will equip you and give you strength to fight the battle and get through the trials. The hard things made me who I am today and gave me compassion for others in similar pain. He is calling you out of darkness and into His glorious light and victory. In Him, the missing and broken pieces of our lives are healed and fit back together.
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